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Newbie baker here, been lurking for a while and just encountered a problem that I think I can learn a lot from if someone just tells me what exactly went wrong. Which is going to be tricky, since I think the answer is about a dozen things. I've had a handful of successes so far and only three failures, but this latest one captured every issue I've had and rolled them all up into one.

Hello all. I have a problem in that I don't know if I have created a sourdough starter or something that will kill me. But first I will say this is my second attempt. In the case of my first I discarded the whole thing as it had bad smells. I've since learnt that this is normal and this leads me on to the possible problem I have now. In the case of my first attempt, I had the bad smell and also, at another time, the smell of alcohol.

I started a new starter about seven days ago, using an 'offhand' method that's always worked reliably for me in the past to produce a starter with the classic yeasty/sour/yummy smell, stable and robust, with good rising characteristics. Now the same method has produced a starter that seems to rise very well and smells great, but more like someone took the top off a Calvados still: lushly, almost 'ether-y' fruity-sweet and clearly kicking out a (probably) flammable mix of ethanol and acetones.

I have been thinking about adding some bourbon to brownies to see how the taste compares to bourbon balls. It is a common practice to replace a like amount of a liquid in a recipe when adding a liquid. Alcohol evaporates faster than water. Does anyone here have experience doing something like this? Will it just dry out the brownies? Should I try something other than a one to one ratio? Any help is appreciated. I hate wasting food.

I was feeling creative and wanted to add some bourbon-soaked cherries to my usual brioche dough. I had been soaking the fruit for three days and drained off all the alcohol before adding the cherries to the dough.

I just took the dough out of the refrigerator after 8 hours of bulk fermentation and it hasn't risen at all.

So, here in Hungary, it seems like everybody's got a farm, and coextensively a vineyard. My husband David and I don't, but we do have an incredibly kind old neighbor who's teaching us to make our own red wine. It's so much fun - picking our own grapes, grinding them, removing stems... Like so:

So, here in Hungary, it seems like everybody's got a farm, and coextensively a vineyard. My husband David and I don't, but we do have an incredibly kind old neighbor who's teaching us to make our own red wine. It's so much fun - picking our own grapes, grinding them, removing stems... Like so:

Naturally, in gratitude I've baked him lots of bread. We're not quite done, but in approximately two weeks we will have (for $50) 150 litres of red wine! Which leads me to my question:

I've seen and read a number of beer bread recipes. But obviously, we've got plentiful wine... Are there any breads which call for a splash of wine in the dough? It seems like it would be possible, but I've never seen any; I'm still a student baker, so I don't know if there are any chemical or taste-related reason for this. Does anybody know, and if wine bread exists, any ideas?

My starter smells like alcohol. It doesn't taste like alcohol, it doesn't taste particularly sour and it doesn't really taste bad. So I'm not sure if it is dead, infected or what.

I have used it a number of times before with very little additional yeast (at times none) to make good bread. However, the bread doesn't taste sour. I guess I'm fine with that because it still tastes good but I'm a little concerned now.

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